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Who hurt you so,
My dear?
Who, long ago
When you were very young,
Did, said, became, was...something that you did not know
Beauty could ever do, say, be, become? --
So that your brown eyes filled
With tears they never, not to this day, have shed...
Not because one more boy stood hurt by life,
No: because something deathless had dropped dead --
An ugly, an indecent thing to do --
So that you stood and stared, with open mouth in which the tongue
Froze slowly backward toward its root,
As if it would not speak again, too badly stung
By memories thick as wasps about a nest invaded
To know if or if not you suffered pain.
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay
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